


Light in the Darkness

by 221b_hound



Series: Galadriel's Promise [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Genre: 221bMerrick, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Crossover, Hobbitlock, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Magic, Plot What Plot, Promises, Reunion Sex, Smut, destined lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:44:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Galadriel keeps her promise to the Halfling soul, Sherlock wakes in the night and wonders if he dreamed, and what is real, and whether he really see the other lives they've lived. But John is right there next to him in this bed, and he is real. So real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light in the Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtlinMerrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/gifts).



> This was written because Atlinmerrick prayed for it. She (and I) wanted a bit more schmoop and smut to cement the happy ending after all the angst and sorrow in Lady of the Wood.
> 
> I don't expect to write more in the series, but then, I used to say that about Guitar Man too. But honestly, I don't think there will be more this time. Unless Atlin goes praying for things again.

After the Lady of Light had kept her promise (made an aeon ago in another age, when the soul who asked her to protect his heart lived in a Halfling body) John Watson took his heart, his Sherlock, to safety and respite in nearby Szeged. Behind them, in the Hungarian forest, the Lady asked the wood to ease their way, which it did by opening a path, and by swallowing up the body of Sebastian Moran, who had intended to murder those the Lady had promised to protect.

John’s hotel lodgings in Szeged were charming and rustic. The view from the window over the River Tisza was enchanting, what with the sunset reflecting off the water and those golden colours echoed in the autumnal leaves of the park surrounding the Castle Museum. Not that either man cared, nor indeed saw the view for some days. Their eyes were captivated by other sights. Other light.

That first night of safety at journey’s end, in his dream, Sherlock was running still, the black-hearted hunter on his trail, and there was a forest, and a stream, and he was falling…

And then there was the Lady, and so much light.

Sherlock’s eyes opened, sudden and wide, but the light that had blinded him in the dream was gone and its place… another kind of light. The glow of familiarity, of a beloved face on the pillow next to his. _John._

Sherlock breathed softly out of his mouth, a calming exhalation, then in again. He could almost taste the warmth of his bedmate. Tea and gunpowder; wool and rain. London and Baker Street.

“John.”

A whisper only, but on the other pillow, John’s eyes opened, as though he’d simply been waiting for Sherlock to say his name. That lined, beautiful face creased in a smile.

“Right here, Sherlock.” Under the sheets, John’s hands reached for Sherlock, finding his arm and chest, stroking them gently. “Right here.”

“I didn’t dream you, then.”

“No,” John said, then his smile grew, “Well, you may have, sometimes. I dreamed you often enough. But not today. Today we’re both here.”

Sherlock blinked and inhaled again. The scent made his mouth water, and that made him feel self-conscious.

John did not seem to have that problem. He shifted closer and lifted his hand from Sherlock’s arm to cup his cheek.

“Do you need anything?”

“No,” Sherlock sighed, turning his face into the palm, kissing the heel of it softly, “Everything I need is here.”

John closed the short distance between them, to press his lips to Sherlock’s, then retreat a little, still smiling. “Me, too.”

For a little while they just lay there, gazing at each other, though John seemed more confident in the reality of things. Sherlock felt less anchored, still. He’d been running for so long. Adrift, the last of his reserves gone as he fell in that stream and prayed for John to be safe.

Prayed. Sherlock Holmes was not a praying man. And yet… hadn’t he? Hadn’t he asked someone to keep John safe?

Hadn’t she said she would?

Here, in the hush of night, the running finally over, John next to him ( _oh, here, finally here by his side)_ such impossible things seemed only… improbable.

“I saw a woman,” he said, falteringly. “In the stream.”

“Yes,” said John quietly, “I mean, I didn’t see her. But she spoke to me.”

“What did she say to you?”

“I don’t remember now. I think she was telling me to hurry. Did she say anything to you?”

“She promised me… that you were safe. That she’d keep you safe.”

John’s thumb brushed Sherlock’s cheekbone softly. “She keeps her promises.”

“Do you remember who she is?”

“Hardly ever.”

“She said… she told me this wasn’t our first life.” Sherlock wanted to scowl at the notion, but things seem truer in the darkling hours, when you have escaped ruin by so fine a margin, and instead he asked: “Do you remember… us? The other… us we’ve been?”

“Sometimes,” John said, less challenged by the concept. “In dreams, or… in glimpses from the corner of my eye, it seems like. I don’t believe they're anything but day dreams when I’m awake, even when I remember them, which I don’t, really.”

“What were we?” So very Sherlock: forever seeking answers.

“I don’t really know. Adventurers, maybe, at the start. Defenders of...something. Explorers, later, comrades, pioneers, travellers. We’re women, sometimes, I think, or one of us is. I think sometimes we’re not human. But it’s always us. You and me. Whatever skin we wear.”

As John spoke, worlds opened up in Sherlock’s mind. Overlapping lines of lives both familiar and strange, in vivid, unmistakably real flashes. “I think,” said Sherlock softly, the words coming before he could choose to stop them, “We are sometimes us now, but in other worlds. Gas lanterns, frock coats and hansom cabs, sometimes.  I may have met you once when I fell from a tree. Why would I think that? Or remember a song by someone named Glitter I've never heard of before? Once, you were a guitarist but that was before we met, or maybe it was after, too. I can’t… the details are fading. I don’t remember any more.”

“Sometimes we’re lovers,” conceded John, “Sometimes not. But it’s always us.”

“We are lovers now.” Sherlock made it a statement, but in all the criss-crossed visions of who they were/are/would be, he was not for the moment sure.

“Yes,” said John, and his hand was now in Sherlock’s hair, stroking his scalp, so slowly, savouring the touch. “Well, we’d only just begun, but we ran out of time. Moriarty stole it from us.”

“We have it back now,” breathed Sherlock.

John slipped closer to him in the bed, wrapped his arms around Sherlock's waist and they kissed. Sherlock wound his arms around John's torso in turn, and felt like he was holding all the worlds, all of the Johns and Sherlocks they had been or would ever be in his arms.

And they kissed some more. Soft and slow.

 _Tea and gunpowder; wool and rain. London and Baker Street._ John Watson tasted perfect, Sherlock thought, and kissed him more deeply still, his tongue entwined with John’s, their breaths one breath.

Sherlock was naked under the sheets. He only now realised that he’d forgotten that he was naked. The only clothes he owned were the ones he’d been wearing in the forest. John had washed them while Sherlock bathed and hung them over the oil heater to dry.

John was naked too. He had plenty of clothes in his bag, but yes, he too was naked. And so warm, his heat eliciting a matching bloom of heat from Sherlock’s skin. Their warmth met, in soft stomachs and firm arms; soft palms, callused fingers; velvet skin and hard cocks. Soft and hard, soft and hard, pressed together, moving, balanced, perfect.

“I want you,” Sherlock breathed over John’s skin.

“Good,” John said softly, laughing with nothing but happiness, “God, the taste of you. I missed that.” He breathed hot over Sherlock’s mouth, the tip of his tongue edged along Sherlock’s full lower lip, over the corner of his mouth, then lips pressed down, sealing them together. When they pulled apart, briefly, John bumped his nose against Sherlock’s cheek. “You taste like home.”

Sherlock’s fingers measured the breadth of John’s chest, explored the ridges of that old scar ( _did it nearly keep them apart or did it bring them together? The Lady’s ways perhaps were not always kind, but they worked_ ) and he lowered his mouth to kiss the mark, that place on the map of his skin that brought them together. He kissed over John's ribs and over John’s hip to the rise of his strong thighs, the curve of his backside.

John spread his legs, his fingers threading through Sherlock’s hair, and sighed and moaned as Sherlock’s mouth kissed the soft skin of his inner thighs, licked at the swell of his arse  between them, breathed over the wet crown of his erection. That mouth opened and slipped over and around and down, then up, and down, tongue swirling. John moaned and arched and said _yes_ and _Sherlock_ and _please_ and _love_ and _amazing_ and _my sweetheart_ and then, with his strong hands, he pulled Sherlock up, along and across his body, to kiss Sherlock’s mouth again, that mouth salty and heady with the taste of John in it.

Carefully, firmly, John pushed Sherlock onto this back, and he rose to straddle him. Their hips and cocks pressed firm together, John bent his head to nuzzle Sherlock’s throat, to kiss that mouth, to lick lingering stripes over nipples and belly.  John shifted to sit further down Sherlock’s thighs so that he could bend to suck at the crown of his cock, to make Sherlock groan and thrust up into his mouth.  Once, twice, and three times, a hot, wet, sucking slide, and Sherlock’s breath began to hitch. John pulled slowly away, then sprawled along Sherlock’s body to kiss his mouth again, so that Sherlock could taste himself on John, too.

Then John moved again, his thighs spread wide around Sherlock’s hips, their full and aching cocks brushing together with exquisite and maddening lightness.

“Please,” gasped Sherlock, hands on John’s thighs, on his hips, to bring him closer down.

“Oh, yes,” agreed John, and he pushed down and forward so that their cocks bumped, nudged, and Sherlock groaned and flexed up into the friction.

John reached down to stroke Sherlock first, then himself, then, with his hand now slick with their desire, held both of them together in his moving hand. Their cocks, hard and silky soft, hot and wet, pressed together in his sure grip, and he began to thrust.

Sherlock’s hands were on John’s waist, on his hips, on his chest, on his arms, on his legs, smoothing over and over and over the skin, urging and caressing and revelling, while John stroked them both with one hand, rested the other over Sherlock’s heart to bear his weight.

And now it was Sherlock’s turn to breathe and whisper _oh_ and _John_ and _yes_ and _my love_ and _mine_ and _please_ and _oh oh oh_ and the last was mingled with John’s own sweet cries as they came.

John eventually thought to clean them up with the tissues by the bed while Sherlock curled bonelessly against his side. John pulled the blankets up over them both and kissed Sherlock’s hair, his nose, his forehead, and Sherlock burrowed closer to the warm, beloved skin.

“You’re my light,” John said, holding Sherlock close, “I’ll always find you, no matter how dark, however lost you seem to be. Light from the shadows shall spring. Always.”

“Not all those who wander are lost,” Sherlock murmured, lips seeking John’s jaw, the soft spot under his ear. He didn’t know where the words came from. One of those other lives he could no longer remember, perhaps. But they were true words and he said them. “I can never be lost. Not with you to light me home.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> In their musings about other lives they've lived, this story references Arthur Conan Doyle, otterlock, femlock, fiction by Atlinmerrick, my own Guitar Man universe and other interpretations of Holmes and Watson through the years in films, books and fandom in general. The last two pieces of dialogue quote Tolkein's own 'All that is gold does not glitter', from Lord of the Rings.


End file.
